首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
The Gestural Theory of Language The initial language in hominids was gestural, and communication using the 【T1】______was act
The Gestural Theory of Language The initial language in hominids was gestural, and communication using the 【T1】______was act
admin
2016-03-10
44
问题
The Gestural Theory of Language
The initial language in hominids was gestural, and communication using the
【T1】______was actually the first form of language.【T1】______
I. The origin of language: sign and sound
—sign’s【T2】______: having to be looking at the signer【T2】______
—【T3】______: first associated with language because they draw attention【T3】______
II.【T4】______for gestural origin of sign language【T4】______
A. Sign languages: meeting all the languages’【T5】______【T5】______
—including: large lexicons, massive gestures,【T6】______, being grammatical【T6】______
—the order affects the meaning greatly
B. A study on how we【T7】______sound【T7】______
—sound and visual information combined in the nervous system
—the same meaning and【T8】______the same neutrons【T8】______
—existing in a phenomenon: the McGurk Effect
C. An illustration to the McGurk Effect
—Seeing somebody speaking is different from hearing speech sounds.
—Hearing a sound with a set of【T9】______makes the difference.【T9】______
III. Gestures and visual input
A. example: sounds sound【T10】______when eyes are open or closed the whole【T10】______
time
B. nervous system: having the ability to respond to sound and【T11】______【T11】______
C. mirror neuron: excited both by the sight and also by the sound
—neutron groups involved in human language【T12】______some of those in【T12】______
rhesus macaques
D. a study on the hypoglossal canal
—humans’ having very big hypoglossal canal overlaps with chimps
—a lot of axons: not sufficient for【T13】______【T13】______
—studying the values in fossil record for necessity and【T14】______【T14】______
IV. The way to create sounds
A. by looking at the【T15】______in hertz, which drops in puberty【T15】______
B. example: saying okay
—looking at the tongue and larynx and air sacs and asking
【T8】
The Gestural Theory of Language
Good morning everyone. Today’s lecture is about the gestural theory of language. The idea here is pretty simple. The idea is that in hominids, the species whose descendents include us, initial language was gestural.(1)Walking upright, bipedalism, freed the hands for communication, and communication using the hands was actually the first form of language.
(2)We know, as I’ll show you in a minute, that sign languages can be very complicated, but sign languages have a limitation. In order to be able to communicate, you have to be looking at the signer. If you’re not looking at the signer, everything else is lost. That’s not true with sound. In sound you don’t have to be looking at the person, you can be in the dark and still have a conversation.(3)One of the theories of the origin of language is that sounds were first associated with language because they drew attention to the signer. In this particular diagram this guy here, making noise, signals to the recipient that he’s about to say something incredibly significant with his hands, like "Look out, there’s a predator ahead." That sound simply drew attention to the signing, sound took over. The gestures became vocal: they went from being hand gestures to being vocal, and were thus invisible.
(4-1)What’s the evidence for this? Well, we have a large group of human signers that use different languages. Here we use mostly American sign language in the United States, but there are a number of different sign languages that use gestures and are very capable of communication.(5)Sign languages meet all of the criteria for languages. They have large lexicons. There are a very large number of gestures.(6)They carry meaning, and they’re grammatical. The order in which they’re made has a very profound significance in terms of their meaning.
(4-2/7)Another piece of evidence in favor of the gestural origin of sign language comes from a very interesting study on how we perceive sound. As I’ll show you in a minute, sound and visual information can be combined within the nervous system,(8)where the meaning of both is the same and activates the same group of neurons. We can see this very profoundly in a phenomenon called the McGurk Effect.
You’re going to see somebody speaking, and you will hear speech sounds. If you listen to these sounds with your eyes open, they will sound different from what you listen to with your eyes closed, but the guy is making the exact same sounds all of the time.(9)What’s different is that when you hear a sound together with a set of lip movements, it actually sounds different to you compared with what you hear by yourself. So here’s the McGurk Effect. Keep your eyes open for the first two sounds, close them for the second two sounds, and then open them again for the final two sounds.
"Ba ba, ba ba, ba ba. "
(10)If your eyes were open the whole time, or closed the whole time, they’ll sound identical, but if you opened your eyes in the middle they’ll sound different. We think we hear what we hear, but apparently what we hear also depends on what we see when it’s a human speaker. This is a good example of the combination of visual input and of gestures.
(11)At the level of the nervous system it turns out that there are nerve cells, there are neurons, that display the ability to respond to sound and also to respond to visual stimuli. These are called mirror neurons. In one case the sound is turned off, and in the other case the visual stimulus is turned off. In both—each one of these little hash marks here represents one action potential—what you can see is that this neuron is excited both by the sight of ripping the paper and also by the sound of ripping the paper. The neuron, in a sense, represents paper ripping.
If we go and map the occurrence of these mirror neurons in the brain of a rhesus macaque, so this is front and this is back,(12)what we see is that there are groups of mirror neurons, there are groups of neurons that are thought to be involved in language in humans, and they overlap.
This has actually been done. We have results of a study here in which they looked at the area of the hypoglossal canal. You can see that in humans you have the very big hypoglossal canal, particularly since our oral cavity volume is not so huge.
But look, we completely overlap with chimps.(13)So while having a lot of axons may be necessary to innervate your tongue, it isn’t sufficient for the development of language.(14)We’re looking for necessity and sufficiency. We can go back and we can take a look at all of these values in the fossil record. In fact there is no strong correlation between language itself, its emergence, and hypoglossal size.
Okay. How about the way we create sounds themselves? How about the human vocal organ and the human vocal tract? In humans we can tell a lot about the speaker.(15)You can see this pretty clearly when we look at the fundamental frequency in hertz. Then what happens at the time of puberty is that it drops in both of them. The pitch of voice also carries communication significance, and that’s because the vocal folds thicken at puberty due to the action of sex hormones.
One of the things we can look at is we can say okay. Let’s look at the tongue and the larynx and the air sacs in humans and in species—non-human primates—and ask what’s going on. It’s actually kind of dangerous to have a descended larynx. It makes it much more likely that food will get stuck. It’s actually the origin of having to do the Heimlich maneuver. Once again, it might have been necessary but it’s not sufficient.
All right. Today we discussed the gestural theory of language. I hope you will have a more clear understanding of it. Thank you very much!
选项
答案
activating
解析
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/go7O777K
0
专业英语八级
相关试题推荐
OneschoolnightthismonthIsidleduptoAlexander,my15-year-oldson,andstrokedhischeekinamannerIhopedwouldseemc
Asmoreschoolsaresetuptoday,learningiscompulsory.ItisanOught,evenworse,aMust,enforcedbyregularhoursandrigi
StephenKrashen’sTheoryofSecondLanguageAcquisitionStephenKrashenisanexpertinthefieldoflinguistics.Somepointsab
FromBostontoLosAngeles,fromNewYorkCitytoChicagotoDallas,museumsareeitherplanning,building,orwrappingupwhol
Manypeopledreamofhavingasmarterbrain.PrincetonneurobiologistJosephZ.Tsienfoundthekey.InSeptemberheannounced
Systematiceffortsatnationalnutritionplanningindevelopingcountriesgobackbarelyadecade.Duringthatbrieftimethere
Humansareforeverforgettingthattheycan’tcontrolnature.Exactlytwentyyearsago,theTimemagazinecoverstoryannounced【
我不敢说生命是什么,我只能说生命像什么。生命像向东流的一江春水,他从最高处发源,冰雪是他的前身。他聚集起许多细流,合成一股有力的洪涛,向下奔注,他曲折的穿过了悬崖峭壁,冲倒了层沙积土,挟卷着滚滚的沙石,快乐勇敢地流走,一路上他享受着他所遭遇的一切
但是比较起冬天来呢,我却又偏爱了秋。是的,就是现在,我觉得现在正合了我的歌子的节奏。我几乎说不出秋比冬为什么更好,也许因为那枝头的几片黄叶,或是那篱畔的几朵残花,在那些上边,是比较冬天更显示了生命,不然,是在那些上面,更使我忆起了生命吧,一只黄叶,一片残英
PASSAGETHREEWhydoesachimpstepintostopafightbetweentwoothers?
随机试题
卡瓦打捞筒在下井前,用实物测量卡瓦结合后的抓捞尺寸,其圆弧半径尺寸应小于落鱼()。
行政组织设置的原则,应遵循的指导思想。
下列关于环境损害赔偿纠纷处理的说法,哪些是正确的?(2005年试卷一第74题)
()阶段的主要任务是将“蓝图”变成工程项目实体,实现投资决策意图。在这一阶段,通过施工,在规定的范围、工期、费用、质量内,按设计要求高效率地实现工程项目目标。
收益性物业由于(),在交易中可以转移的不是其实物,而是其所有权、使用权或其他权益。
在仿古风味菜和其他主要代表菜品中,对应正确的是()。
记住自己很快就要死了,这是面对人生重大选择时最重要的工具。因为几乎一切——所有外界的期望,所有骄傲,所有对于困窘和失败的恐惧——这些东西在死亡面前都________,你已是________,没理由不追随内心。填入画横线部分最恰当的一项是:
一个包裹,除非其大小在规定的尺寸之内,否则投递服务公司不会接受。所有被接受投递的包裹都有回邮地址。如果上面陈述是正确的,下面哪一项也一定是正确的?
Thewin______gloriousmemoriesofhischampionship-winningdays.
Forthispart,youareallowed30minutestowriteanessayentitledCollegeStudents’senseofResponsibility.Youshouldwrite
最新回复
(
0
)